Ken Rosenthal is apparently not buying what Buster Posey and the SF Giants are selling

The SF Giants have looked a little better as of late, winning their last two games thanks to key contributions from Willy Adames and Rafael Devers who had been struggling. Yet, Ken Rosenthal wrote a recent piece in The Athletic which seemed to take issue with some of the moves Buster Posey has made as president of baseball operations.

Rosenthal wrote this about Posey’s decisions: “[T]he sum total of Posey’s moves, from the signing of Willy Adames to the trade for Rafael Devers to the hiring of Tony Vitello, is amounting to subtraction by addition.”

Rosenthal thinks Posey and Giants are going the wrong direction

He also questioned Posey’s decision to move on from catcher Patrick Bailey since the Cleveland Guardians seemed to be thrilled at the fact they acquired him. The Guardians have been a playoff team the last two seasons under manager Stephen Vogt so maybe it’s fair to wonder whether they know better than the Giants. 

Rosenthal raises fair points about how all of these moves in a vacuum are defensible. The Giants needed a shortstop so they overpaid slightly for one in Adames. They needed a slugger so they traded for Devers. They needed more energy in the clubhouse so they hired Vitello.

They all made sense and could be justified but now one can’t help but wonder if it all adds up to a winning baseball team. The Giants have made a lot of bets on players in recent years and it’s not clear how those bets are going to turn out.

Devers and Adames are heating up right now but they are streaky hitters by nature so a summer drop-off would not come as a shock to anybody. There’s just so much money tied up in these guys and the scary part is there is not an easy way out of any of this.

Chapman and Adames both have full no-trade clauses in their contracts so they can decide if they want to leave or not. Even if Devers heats up even more it’s going to be hard to get another team to take on his massive deal which lasts until 2033.

Vitello has not been blamed a ton for this season but Rosenthal and others have been critical of him and think the fact that he is a rookie manager with no MLB experience prior to this year is a bigger issue than many believe it to be.

We don’t know how it’s all going to shake out. The Giants have won two in a row and creamed the Los Angeles Dodgers last night. Devers looks like his best self so maybe just maybe this team is turning a corner.

But we’ve thought that before this season. They seemed to be turning a corner heading to Philadelphia to take on a Phillies team that was about to fire its manager in favor of Don Mattingly and proceeded to get swept in heartbreaking fashion.

If you told me right now the Giants will make the playoffs or that they will win less than 60 games I’d believe either outcome equally. That’s how volatile this team seems to be and Rosenthal and the national baseball media seem to be souring on Posey in part for that very reason.

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